Client :: Confrugal.com
A blog about coupons and saving money

Eve was the winner of the giveaway from Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports. After looking through lots of coupon sites and what Eve likes and doesn’t like, I decided I wanted to have fun with this project & try out a torn/curled edge look. Eve wanted something that she could call her own – something that would make her coupon blog stand out. She gave me some ideas she had in mind, told me her tagline was “CAUTION: Hot Deals Ahead”, and Eve got her own caution symbol, complete with coupons.

For this project, we also created buttons (for people to grab & put on their own sites), social media tags (in the header & footer) and a graphic for her coupon database.

:: The buttons ::

:: The coupon database button ::

:: The blog ::

I had a lot of fun working on this project (as I’m sure you can tell by looking at the design). And make sure you swing on over to Confrugal.com, like Eve’s facebook page, follow her on twitter, and add her rss feed to your reader so you can get coupons and super deals as they’re posted!

See the live site → Confrugal.com

client :: BabyBrowns.com
An online baby boutique specializing in:
designer diaper bags, designer baby furniture, baby gear, baby gifts, nursery decor, and more

Troy and Bethany Beaver purchased BabyBrowns.com in Fall 2011 and wanted a new identity and website for the store. They shared ideas they had for their baby boutique’s new look with me, and we put together concepts for their new identity. We also created business card, letterhead and envelope templates. And then moved on to the design of the site, and building the design into a BigCommerce template. Plus, I created a matching WordPress theme design for the BabyBrowns.com Blog. Overall, it was a very fun project. I had always wanted to do a design for a baby boutique, and I couldn’t have had better clients. Troy & Bethany are amazing people and were fabulous to work with.

:: The identity ::

:: The website ::

:: The Blog ::

Some fun things done on this project for extra flair (with JavaScript)

• An image on the homepage (under main content section) that will randomly change on page load/refresh
• A featured slideshow that displays actual text, with drop-shadows, button navigation & hover title
• Featured product carousel slider at bottom of store homepage

BabyBrowns.com has some really gorgeous baby stuff. Their designer diaper bags don’t even look like diaper bags! Their nursery bedding makes me wish I could sleep in a crib. Their kids’ bedding for twin & full beds is fabulous as well. And they have Bella Bands, which I could not live without during my last two pregnancies. I just wish I had found them sooner. So go check out BabyBrowns.com, because they are truly a unique baby boutique & carry a rockstar supply of baby stuff!

See the live site → BabyBrowns.com

This reveal has been a long time coming! Remember when I had this blog design giveaway? And Lisa from Healthiest Life 4 Me won? Well, Lisa’s redesign is finally LIVE! A lot happened between the end of the giveaway and now. Oh things like my husband switching jobs, the birth of our fourth child, adjusting to our new life [being a mom to 4 little ones, not a walk in the park, folks], web hosting stuff, and a crazy busy Summer [for both myself & Lisa]. Thankfully, Lisa was very gracious – a phenomenal woman she is indeed.

In the beginning of the design stage, I knew I wanted an illustrated version of Lisa. I mean, her blog title is Healthiest Life 4 Me, so I thought it fitting that “Me” [Lisa in this case], should be incorporated into the design. Lisa is into eating well & working out, so when I came across a picture of her in a tank with the words “Shut Up And Train”, I knew I wanted to use that in the design. So, I started on Lisa’s “Mini Me”.

Once I had her “Mini Me” done, I started to work on the blog’s logo. To incorporate working out, I drew a set of weights to go with the fonts I had chosen for her site.

These elements made the rest of the design and layout easy, and coding the design was a walk in the park. Below are some before and after screenshots of Lisa’s blog.

Before ::

After ::

See the live site → healthiestlife4me.com

I have been blessed to work with some amazing women lately, and Marina from Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports is one of them. Marina was moving her blog from blogger to WordPress [self-hosted WP], she was switching the blog’s name a bit [Energizer Bunny's to Energizer Bunnies'], and she was adding a tagline [Family, Faith and Fabulous Finds]. The blog would still be full of reviews, giveaways and inspiration, but with the move & name change, she wanted a new look. She sent me some graphics of kids, fingerpainting and rainbows. Marina wanted something colorful & that would embrace the joy she sees in her children. Immediately, I knew I wanted to create a couple kids to represent her children, so I asked some questions. She responded with a picture, which led to the fingerpainting cuties you’ll find in her header. [Trust me, her kids are a lot cuter.]

Then, I played around with adding rainbows and clouds to the design. The design features a cloud and rainbow at the bottom right-hand of the site. So the clouds with rainbows wouldn’t look too out of place, I placed clouds behind the kids [adding some dimension in the header], and added the painted handprints to the clouds. Then, I deliberated on how to keep a bunny aspect in the design. The answer came swiftly as my hand formed a peace sign, & my brain delivered the message that it wasn’t a peace sign, but bunny ears, my hand was making – “Oh, use the fingerpaint!”

Once the design was done, everything else just rolled into place. Marina had expressed that she wanted her sidebar decluttered (and I just love me a good sidebar decluttering). Marina & I combed through her sidebar to see what we needed to keep in the sidebar, what could go on a separate page of the blog, and what could be left behind. I created a custom button for her that matched the new design.

Before ::

After ::

See the live site → energizerbunniesmommyreports.com

Marlon Smith approached me with a new project for Success By Choice Seminars, a series of entrepreneurial seminars in the Charlotte, NC, area. [I'm late in adding this to my portfolio, as the original seminar series has now ended.] The business seminars were a joint effort of Success By Choice, Inc., and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Black Chamber of Commerce (CMBCC), with the support of some other entrepreneurs in the Charlotte area.

The website was an informational site, with registration for the upcoming seminars, and a couple products available for purchase. I built it on WordPress, using the Headway theme.

The black rectangle in the screenshot above is where a promo video for the seminar series plays.

See the live site → successbychoiceseminars.com

When I first met Amanda, she was making a big transition. She had decided to close her shop, 29 & Co., and start a blog where she could share her ideas & awesome products she had found. As we talked more about her project, and she showed me different sites she liked, I knew this was going to be a fun project. And when she said the name was potterlime, immediately black & white with splashes of lime jumped to my mind. Of course, she was also thinking of those same colors. So with our brains pretty much in synch, I got to work on her logo…

Once I had her logo finished, I used it as inspiration for the rest of the site’s design. The site’s design came together fairly quickly. I drew a lime with some swirls that I positioned to always appear at the bottom right of the website. I added a few fun, lime-colored accents, like the lime “go” button on the search area & the little birdie in the latest tweets section. Another fun thing I added was during the actual coding phase of the project, with the featured post slider.

In the end, I had a blast working on the project & was very pleased with the result…

See the live site → potterlime.com

Amanda also had me make her a matching twitter background [note: this was before twitter changed their layout, so this background is now hard to see on smaller screens when logged into twitter]

See Amanda’s twitter page → twitter.com/potterlime

Syreeta is a Zumba instructor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and wanted a website to feature her upcoming classes, Zumba news, photos and videos and an online store filled with Zumba merchandise. I had so much fun working with Zumba Diva Syreeta on this project – she has introduced me to the world of Zumba & I can’t wait to get my Zumba on!

See the live site → getyourzumbaon.com

Tina McAllister wanted to revamp her blog. Just over a year ago, we made some changes to TinaMcAllister.com, however a lot has happened since then. Tina is now working on a couple different fiction manuscripts, and not currently offering the ebook coaching & ghostwriting services that her blog was still emphasizing. Tina wanted a personal blog, about her life as a wife, mother & writer, and it occurred to her she could revamp TinaMcAllister.com to serve this new purpose.

When Tina contacted me about her redesign idea, she had already laid out the different sections she wanted & what kind of content was to go on each page. Tina really liked the hand lettering I did for her Gina Agnes project, so she wanted to incorporate something similar into this design. And Tina wanted to keep the color scheme similar, unless something else jumped out at me when I was designing.

I ended up keeping the colors very similar, but went for a look that was completely different than before. The hand lettering was by far the most time consuming – it took so long just to get the “T” how I wanted it to look! After the hand lettering was done, the rest of the design fell into place. I used the Headway framework for WordPress, which helped make the process (after designing) go smooth like butter.

See the live site → TinaMcAllister.com

An interesting change of pace from the usual feminine design, designing & developing jeffcoles.com was a fresh & fun experience. This was one of the most masculine designs I’ve done so far. Some of my favorite things are:

• the text-graphic for the site’s name & tagline
• the use of sketch fonts as headers in sidebar
• the grungy facebook & twitter buttons
• the form to sign up to receive blog updates via email is styled in a fill-in-the-blank format
• the striped-gradient-to-solid background on the category links (in the sidebar)

Ok, so I have lots of favorites…

In addition to the stuff I mentioned above, I also added Recent Posts to the sidebar & Jeff’s latest tweets. And I used the fabulous Thesis framework for WordPress.

See the live site → jeffcoles.com

Jeff Coles is a Commerical Real Estate Broker in Bethesda, MD. You can read more about him at his blog: Jeff Coles, The Apartment Broker.

Marlon & Syreeta Smith needed a logo & blog design for their new venture: Covenant Keepers, Inc. Once we finished their logo design, it was time to move on → to the blog design. Marlon & Syreeta had a clear vision for their blog & already had the various sections laid out – from the different categories to the different pages. The couple wanted the blog to be called Marlon & Syreeta’s Blog, to give it that personal feeling. We all agreed that Thesis should be used as the basic framework for the site. Marlon picked his color {blue}, Syreeta picked her color {cranberry} & the design went from there.

Marlon & Syreeta’s Vision Statement: To encourage, educate and empower newlywed couples, engaged couples and those dating with Biblical principles and real-life strategies for experiencing healthy marriages with a 0% divorce rate.

In addition to the blog’s graphics & layout, we integrated social media, created custom questionnaires, installed google analytics, and set up email subscription to the blog’s feed. I also helped Marlon & Syreeta with adding content to their site & guided them through the basics of using WordPress.

See the live site → MarlonandSyreeta.com